Maria Stephenson

Five years ago, Maria was trapped within an unhappy toxic marriage. Then her fortieth birthday happened and she wrote herself a ‘living bucket list.’

Top of it was to escape her relationship and to find herself again, ticking off items from her list as she went. So when she isn’t jumping out of aeroplanes or falling off horses, she’s been pouring her experiences out into poetry in the hope they may help other women trapped in abusive relationships.

Her debut collection, Poetry for the Newly Single Forty Something, is the result.

Now, with an MA in Creative Writing under her belt and a thriving teaching ‘business’ writing courses, she can continue ticking off more items. Still to come is swimming with dolphins and completing the London Marathon amongst many others. Life really does begin at forty.

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News

The January Non-fiction list of borrowed books list our very own Harry Gallagher and his Northern Lights collection right there as Number One. Northern Lights continues its success and is popular with those who care about the economic and social deprivation in the Tyne Tees area.

On the 22nd of January the Yorkshire Times’ Literary correspondent, Steve Whittaker, wrote:

“A ‘go-to’ source for theatre directors and historians alike, Looking for Githa, is as much an invaluable piece of historical research into the industrial north east at the turn of the last century, as an examination of an embryonic feminist whose life was a self-imposed enigma.Riley’s forensic investigation has unearthed many fascinating familial connections. Alongside Githa, the Sowerby line has produced children’s author and landscape painter John George Sowerby, Antarctic explorer Murray Levick, award-winning sculptor Ruby Levick, children’s book illustrator Millicent Sowerby, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Leo Sowerby.”

Steve also points out that “Sowerby’s dissection of social structures through observation has been compared to that of Ibsen. And the power of so-called Realist dramas to point up, and thereby help to redress, social iniquity, is still pressing, which is why Rutherford & Son remains cutting edge in any era”

And reminds us…

In conjunction with the play’s opening at the Crucible, publisher Stairwell Books will be launching Looking for Githa in a pre-performance event at the theatre on Saturday 9th February. Introductions by Stairwell’s Rose Drew and Alan Gillott will be followed by a presentation by the author, Patricia Riley.

Stairwell author Pat Riley joined by Sowerby scholar-editor J. Ellen Gainor have been invited to talk at the National Theatre in London about the social and family background of Githa Sowerby and that of women in general during the early 20th century.

In association with The Crucible Theatre and Stairwell Books, on the afternoon of Saturday, 9 February, Patricia Riley launches LOOKING FOR GITHA (expanded and updated). To help us celebrate Githa’s life and her work, The Crucible is offering all launch attendees £5 off of a theatre ticket for that evening’s performance of RUTHERFORD & SON. This is Githa’s most famous play, designated one of the 100 best plays of the Twentieth century by the National Theatre.

To secure your £5 per ticket discount, pre-order LOOKING FOR GITHA directly from Stairwell Books at a special price of £10, and receive the Crucible discount code. Then, join us at 4.30pm for a 5pm start, and pick up your book at that time.

Or, just take a chance and show up for the launch on the 9th: but this play has sold out audiences in runs in York and Newcastle, so that might backfire! If you do just show up and hope for the best, the Crucible will honour the £5 discount until the night is sold out.

Doors for Patricia Riley’s launch open at 4.30pm for a 5.00pm start, and the launch event ends at 6.30pm. That evening’s show of Rutherford & Son begins at 7.30pm. The Crucible bar will be open for this event.

“This book has everything I look for within fantasy. Strong protagonists and antagonists, an equal split of genders, diversity, and story-lines that at times reflected a modern day Africa. This is a highly satisfying read with a well developed world, and magic system. I cannot wait to see how it continues. Well done Susie 5 Stars.”

Pauline Kirk, who with her daughter Jo Summers wrote the successful DI Ambrose series of mysteries, and is the author of Border 7 and The Keepers, along with Oz Hardwick who edited New Crops from Old Fields have both been nominated for the 2018 York Culture Awards #YorkCA18 Excellence in Writing categories. By an amazing coincidence the third finalist, Robert Powell, is also a regular contributor to Dream Catcher, our Literary Arts Journal. All three of these nominations are well deserved and Stairwell Books wishes them well.

The winners will be announced on November 19th at the York Theatre Royal.

Steve Whitaker, the Literary Correspondent of the Yorkshire Times has reviewed Andrea Michael’s book, Wine Dark Sea Blue in September 5th issue of the newspaper. The review begins “This bitterly sardonic, but ironically warm, interior examination of a fractured life in a bonded but mutually destructive family yields a compelling microcosmic picture of a dysfunctional metropolitan landscape.”

Whitaker notices that although the book is cantered around a Greek London family the message about growing up in an expatriate family is more generally applicable:

“The first-person narration gives the novel impetus – we experience the details of a katabatic descent as though just lived. That Ellie’s family are of Greek origin adds flesh to a sense of cultural dislocation which hardens, further, her cynicism as to the coloratura dynamics of family relationships. The Greek perspective is significant, here, and Michael appears to be talking from first-hand experience: kicking against the easy adoption of stereotypical roles – at least one of Ellie’s ongoing bêtes noire is an insidious, controlling paternalism – Michael finds a platform for making a wider point about the tenacity of diasporic culture, even at generational distance.”

Steve later says:

“Michael returns to the amorphous sea instinctively, and it is in the dark waters of Greek myth that one of this finely-observed novel’s defining moments is situated. The capricious figure of Persephone, who occasions a lacerating and destructive sense of loss in the mother she leaves behind as she marries Hades and becomes a goddess of the Underworld, is thereafter obliged to wander a liminal space between earth and the realm of Death, as an emollient to both husband and mother, Demeter. The chiaroscuro interplay of worlds of life and death, of relentless seasonal changes, becomes a metaphor for the ache of Ellie’s unease, for her wandering purposelessness.”

Stairwell books is at Follycon, the 69th British National Science Fiction Convention held at The Majestic Hotel in Harrogate, from 30 March – 2 April 2018. We will be announcing the Advance Order list for our New Science fiction fantasy novel, Return of the Mantra, by Susie Williamson and the Audio Book version of Pauline Kirk‘s Border 7, presciently accurate science fiction book predicting Brexit and the inevitable consequences of Corporate rule. Pauline’s earlier novel, the very well received The Keepersis available as a Kindle eBook.

Dream Catcher 36 has been reprinted after running through the initial print run. Dream Catcher, a literary arts journal edited by John Gilham, has been steadily growing in popularity. Dream Catcher’s circulation dropped dramatically after the failure of Border’s Bookshop and is beginning to recover its position as a premiere collection of eclectic poems, short stories and reviews. Dream Catcher 36 also features the art of Elaine Thomas, CBE. Issue 36 is available from the Dream Catcher bookshop. To ensure your copy subscription is recommended.

This important book by John Rayne-Davis linking Jewish and Catholic martyrdoms in York was launched at The Bar Convent on Wed March 14th at 7.30 pm, on the eve of the annual Clifford’s Tower Commemoration. The event was supported by the Lord Mayor of York, the CEO of the Liberal Jews in the UK and a representative of the Catholic Bishop of Middlesbrough. John Rayne-Davis gave a short talk outlining the background of both Martyrdoms which was followed by a broad discussion off bigotry and its growth in the 21st Centaury. The Martyrdoms at Clifford’s Tower 1190 and 1537 is available from the website and from The Bar Convent gift shop.

Crime Noir was the order of the day at Hull’s Kardomah94 as Neal Hardin, a lifelong resident of Hull, introduced his novel, The Go-to Guy. In spite of it being Mother’s Day Neal was well supported as friends and colleagues read portions of the novel, each imparting their own characterisations to the work. Unlike the hired killer’s victim, the show was not at all dead, and a police raid was not required to enliven the proceedings.

York writer Claire Patel-Campbell brought to life her novel Abernathy at the New Schoolhouse Gallery in Peasholme Green. Abernathy explores how a single, albeit violent, event can have a devastating event through a whole community. Claire, accompanied by mulled wine to keep out the chill and supported by her writers group, read extracts, bringing to life the isolation of rural Wisconsin.

David Lee Morgan’s remarkable trilogy of plays published in one volume as The River Was a God has been well received at events in London at the Horse Hospital, his 70th Birthday extravaganza; and in Leeds, at the Moortown Methodist Church. These plays, developed over time on the London Poetry circuit and performed at the Edinburgh Fringe have attracted major critical acclaim and are now available from Stairwell Books. David can be booked to perform any of these plays.

This amazing man is still creating brilliant new poetry. A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever is the musings of a brilliant poet and humanitarian at the end of his life. It is Don’s last gift, filled with snippets of the wonderful, the strange, the heartbreaking parts of being human. Buy it now from our bookshop. All royalties go to the St. Leonard’s Hospice.